HIIT Workout

Just a bit of advice. When embarking on a new fitness regime to combat excesses of cheese, wine and scones you may wish to consider HIIT workouts. I would recommend, however, that when googling for said workout you do not put "beginner HIIT workout" into google. There is clearly something wrong with the search engine. The Youtube video it returned for me was obviously made for some kind of fitness expert. I might complain if I can ever get my breath back.

'The Body Coach' introduced the warm up, after which I felt quite tired. At this point he was pretending to be out of breath. I thought perhaps it was just him being nice to indicate his empathy for the beginner predicament. I am now wondering whether he was actually out of breath.

He launched into 8 minutes of frenzied activity the like of which I have never seen, let alone engaged in. It started with 30 seconds of running on the spot with high knees then 30 seconds rest. He suggested kindly that I could rest for 45 seconds if that was better for me. "Don't be ridiculous" I thought, "it'll be fine, besides I can't work out how to pause the video in the right places". 30 seconds of burpees, oh dear God. 30 seconds rest. Have a drink he says - damn I didn't think of that. I raced to the bathroom to slurp from the tap and was back just in time to do 30 seconds of low to high squats. Another 30 seconds "rest". Finally 30 seconds of hill climbers.  Phew, I thought it must be over. Maybe now we do some yoga.

Then said I needed to do it all again. And again.

By round three I was bright red and sweating like mad. Everything felt wobbly. I couldn't make it to the tap and back inside a minute let alone half of one, thus rendering myself completely out of sync with what he was telling me to do. He was climbing a hill and I was still squatting, it was chaos. Before the last exercise I had given up and collapsed in a heap on the floor. I spent the next 8 minutes practically passed out listening to Joe "The Body Coach" doing it all again and telling me it was "hard work". No kidding matey.

Once I had eaten a chocolate digestive and calmed down I read the comments beneath the video. Apparently I should have put the term "low impact" into Google rather than "beginner". This is literally the only time it would have been advisable to read the comments, ever.

HIIT is apparently the way forward. "20 minutes, no equipment, no excuses". Yeah thanks Joe but I dispute that. I now have four very good excuses - exercise my body is not designed to carry out.

Oh and if in spite of my feedback above you still fancy giving it a go, please ensure you do the workout while no-one is in (in your house or any others on the street), and that you choose a room with solid floorboards. And don't forget a water bottle.